Besides Pasta, What is There?

Pasta is so versatile that entire cookbooks have been written on the various ways to cook it. For instance, you can put the following on pasta for incredible eating experiences: (these are not recipes, but if you ask, I will provide. Most of these can be improvised if you have any cooking experience at all.)
1. Olive oil and garlic
2. Frozen peas and onion sauteed with a tiny bit of sugar
3. Basil and parsley pesto
4. Sauteed mushrooms with parsley
5. Sauteed Zucchini with onion and purchased pasta sauce (A&P Masters Choice of course)
6. Swiss chard and mushrooms

Now that you have some idea of the many things you can put ON pasta, know that another grain can be used, maybe without the satisfying quality of pasta, but good tasting in its own way: Polenta.

Polenta is simply cornmeal, but purchasing the box of Italian polenta is better because it tends to be sold as an "instant". The word, "instant" is a bit of a misnomer because it still takes 5 minutes of continuous stirring. Read the directions on the box carefully because Polenta can overcook and become hard in a flash. It can be cooked so that it is the consistency of mashed potatoes or using a TINY BIT more water, the consistency of cream of wheat. I prefer the consistency of mashed potatoes. That way, any of the juices from the veggies loosen up the polenta and it is really good.

I would not, under any circumstances, ever purchase the cooked polenta sold in the shape of a sausage preserved forever in a plastic casing sitting on the grocery shelf. I bought one once and threw it out at first taste.

ZUCCHINI AND ONION WITH A&P MARINARA SAUCE
olive oil-you can use from as little as 1 tablespoon to 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) if you use less, make sure the heat is low to give the moisture from the vegetables time seep out.
garlic 3 or 4 cloves smashed
1 onion sliced thin
4 fresh zucchini sliced into thin rounds
1 jar of marinara sauce
bay leaf

Heat a deep frying pan and put in the oil and the garlic. Heat for a bit, but do not let the garlic brown.
Add the onions and cook until wilted.
Add the zucchini and cook for about 5 minutes.
Add the marinara sauce with a bay leaf and cook for about 15 minutes until zucchini is completely wilted and translucent. The sauce will also be a little thicker.
Put over pasta or polenta or even brown rice.

Twenty Minute Tomato Sauce and Deceitfulness

Before I get into the tomato sauce I make, I want to warn people of an insidious and treacherously deceitful practice that I uncovered last weekend. You must be on the lookout for this whenever you shop.

Many pasta boxes are no longer 16 ounces! They are the same size box, but the label says 13.75 oz. DO NOT BUY THEM. Look for the DeCecco boxes instead. All of DeCecco brand pastas were 16 oz. at the supermarket, whereas other brands had a smattering of 13 oz boxes among the 16 oz boxes. TRICKERY!!!!!!.
(DeCecco is really one of the best brands out there. In fact, you should only buy DeCecco whole wheat pastas.)
We must be vigilant and insist that DeCecco not change their sizes as well. So copy the following letter and send it to DeCecco.
Send this to
customerservice@dececco.it

Dear De Cecco,
Many pasta manufacturers are downsizing their boxes of pasta. Please do not follow their lead. Please keep your pasta in boxes of 16 oz. or 453 grams.
Yours truly,

Avoid also Stop and Shop food stores. Their prices are outrageous and that is where I found most of the downsized pasta. Stop n Shop is owned by some huge international conglomerate. Don't shop there.

20 minute tomato sauce
1/4 cup olive oil
3 or 4 garlic cloves crushed or put through a press
1 medium onion finely chopped
1 can (28 oz.) of whole plum shaped tomatoes _put in a bowl first and chop coarsley
1 teaspoon of dried basil
2 teaspoons sugar
salt & pepper

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan
add the garlic DO NOT LET IT BROWN
Add the onion and let it wilt.
Then, add the tomatoes and all the juice
Add the sugar
Add the dried basil
Let it cook for about 20 minutes
season with salt and pepper.

Pour this over pasta or polenta. Polenta is so easy to make. Buy instant polenta in the supermarket and it cooks in 5 minutes. So good too. Do not forget to make some green thing like broccoli or spinach or kale or swiss chard. Corn does not have the protein of wheat so you have to get some more nutrients into your body.

Greening the Pot

My First Husband and I went out to dinner last night at a new Greek restaurant in town.I had three side dishes because they only had sauteed veggies for a non meat entree. (Was not in the mood for fish)
So I ordered from the side dish section of the menu and had the most delicious spinach and rice dish with tomato called spanakorizo. MMMM. I also had steamed chickory with olive oil poured over the top with lemon wedges. Along with stuffed grape leaves. Having eyes bigger than my stomach, I took half of it home. But I realized I had a whole bunch of greens for dinner. Spinach, chickory, grape leaves. Is that why I got up at 6 this morning, did a load of laundry and hand washed a buch of handwashables before sitting here?

The steamed chickory reminded me of using greens in any saute or soup. My mother used to do this:

Soup
3 cloves garlic
finely chopped onion - if you are in the mood for onion.
olive oil. My mom used a lot, I use less. I think 1/4 cup is good.
can of beans (white kidney, white navy, butter beans, cranberry beans, cannelinni, whatever)
water
bunch of greens, any type - escarole, chickory, kale, Swiss chard, spinach - washed and chopped
salt & pepper


Saute the garlic and onion (if you are in the mood) in the olive oil. Do not brown, just cook over medium low heat until it is really wilted.
Open a can of beans and rinse them if you want. Most times I do.
Put the can of beans in the garlic olive oil and (maybe) onion.
Let it heat up.
Add some water so that it is soupy...maybe a cup maybe more.
Add the greens.
Cook until tender.....depending on the greens. Just keep tasting and if seems done, it is.

It is important to eat leafy greens if you are a vegan. Did you know that whole grains limit the absorption of iron, calcium and zinc.? Not to say that you should not eat them. Just don't rely on them exclusively. Keep that diet really varied and take some supplements.

Trying Hard to Eat Well ......Not Succeeding

Eating well is hard. By eating well, I do not mean eating expensively. I mean eating foods that have real nutrition in them.
Convenience (so called) foods did not become the norm because making it yourself is so easy. In fact, in the 60's there was a famous cookbook called "The I Hate To Cook Cookbook" and the author, Peg Bracken, became famous for her easy recipes. She relied on using bullion cubes and canned things along with chopped onion or celery to give some sense of freshness to her dishes. Cooking has always been difficult and time consuming but now it is harder still because working full time and getting a proper meal on the table takes energy that may be depleted by 6 PM. Then again I am not a spring chicken. OOOPs-this is a vegan blog. Sorry about the chicken analogy.

As I said, eating well is hard. The cooking is the easy part. The tedious part is all the preparation. Take Gypsy Soup for instance. It only cooks in about 20 minutes. But it is 45 minutes of cutting stuff up. It also uses canned stock and canned tomatoes.

Let me just say something about canned vegetable stock vs. fresh.
Use the canned.
Making fresh vegetable stock is just too much work for so little outcome.

So in endeavoring to eat well, you are going to have to compromise somewhere or else spend the whole of your life cooking.

It is 10 PM and I am off to bed. I will post two recipes tomorrow or the next day. They will be Gypsy Soup and Lentil Soup. Both are scrumptious.

Health on a plate

Tabouleh
Lebanese "parsley on steroids" salad.

When I was in Lebanon I made tabouleh everyday. We ate it for breakfast lunch and dinner. And I believe to this day that that is why I was not sick during the time I was in Lebanon (December to last day of April) nor was I sick for two years after! Not only did I eat all that parsley, but everything else we ate was very fresh. Because I was there during Lent when the Lebanese eat no meat at all for 6 weeks, we ate vegetarian. But it wasn't the vegetarian part of the diet that was so healthy, it was the tabouleh. Or maybe it was both.

Let's think parsley.
It has tremendous amounts of vitamin C. Two tablespoons give you about 17% of your daily need for vitamin C. Those same two tablespoons give you over 150% of your daily need for vitamin K. (If you have any blood issues, this is a winner) Parsley also has lots of vitamin A. All this nutrition in a mere two tablespoons and a measley 2 calories! (well you do add olive oil to the recipe so calorie count is way over 2)

There was a time when I used to juice parsley and drink it. It has an extremely strong taste and it was hard to drink without something added to it. While parsley juice is good for you, it is tough on the palate. But tabouleh-now tabouleh you can eat everyday and you just get to love more and more. The trouble is that tabouleh is trouble to make. But in Lebanon it is made so often that it is nothing more than a routine daily chore.

here is a recipe for tabouleh. Real easy if you have a food processor for the parsley. Everything is cut up really tiny.

Put about 2 cups of water up to boil first.

2 fresh bunches of curly leaf parsley. Very green. Very stiff-not limp.
1/2 cup Bulgar wheat (I have seen this in regular supermarkets in the ethnic section,
would also look in Whole Foods or those so called nutrition type stores.)
3 or 4 scallions - maybe more depending on your taste. You could also use 1/2 of a small onion.
2 to 4 tomatoes - this also depends on your taste and strength of your cutting arm. I use 2.
1/4 cup olive oil - or less if you do not want to use so much.
1 heaping tablespoon of dried mint
1/2 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp cinnamon
juice from 2 fresh lemons if you do not have fresh lemons- do not make this recipe.
salt
pepper

Put the bulgar in a bowl and pour boiling water over it. Let it sit for 1/2 hour.
Get the sharpest knife you have and scrunch the well washed parsley in your hand so that only a bit is peeking out of your fist. Then make the smallest of slices so that the parsley is like tiny green confetti. Keep moving the parsley out of your fisted fingers so that a little bit shows and continue to make tiny slices. Or stick it in a food processor. Put it in a big bowl.
Now cut the tomatoes so that they have tiny pieces. Put it in the bowl.
Now cut up the scallions into tiny pieces. Put it in the bowl.
Add the olive oil, mint, allspice,cinnamon, salt, pepper and lemon juice.
Mix.
Eat it western style with a fork or get pita, place a good amount on top of the pita and tear away the sides of the pita to scoop up the tabouleh in the center. Or you can eat it scooped up with lettuce leaves.

Stay healthy. I love you.

Who put the dip in the dip de dip de dip?

I made two vegan dips for my party the other night and the vegan in the family did not eat them in the amount that I thought they should have been eaten. Not to worry. Instead of eating them as a dip, I ate them with a spoon the next day. In fact, my first husband and I took turns eating them with our spoons while standing up next to the refrigerator. But the vegan in the family was too busy singing to do any eating.
Both were crudite dips - not for potato chips or tostitos.
I took a recipe from Jane Brody and changed it a bit so that it was vegan. I thought it was delicious.
3/4 cup of lentils (I used split red lentils)
3 cups water
olive oil
Big onion sliced thin
2 Tablespoons of pine nuts
salt
pepper

First, heat a frying pan and when hot, put in the oil. Next put in the sliced onions and turn the heat to LOW. Cook very slowly for at least 45 minutes until the onions are nice and limp and brown.
While the onions are cooking, put the water in a pot with the lentils and cook for 35 minutes over medium low heat. Drain.
Put the onions and lentils in a food processor with the pine nuts, salt and pepper. Pulse it a few times until it is all well blended.

I will return. Going to see Melinda Page Hamilton on a new show called Castle on ABC. Melinda is my favorite actress.

Ramblings

Is anyone reading my blog? I am feeling a bit lonely out here in cyberspace.
This week I made sofrito which is a Puerto Rican flavoring something like the Italian battuto. I also flavored some olive oil with achiote seeds and then cooked the world's most flavorfull rice. Oh how good it was, but it had 1/4 cup of achiote seed flavored olive oil in it. My first husband and I inhaled it.
(My first husband is actually my only husband and we are still married. But calling him that makes me feel modern and movie star-ish)

My first husband also devoured the beans cooked in the sofrito mixture. There is just something about cilantro and its stronger cousin, "culantro" or "recaito". It has a warm flavor that intoxicates me.

Sofrito
two onions cut in big chunks
whole head of garlic peeled
4 to 5 peppers - mix cubanelle and red peppers
whole bunch of cilantro washed thoroughly
4 leaves of culantro or sometimes called recaito
two fresh plum tomatoes

Blend it all together in a processor and put 1/2 cup portions into zip lock sandwhich bags. You can freeze them. When you need to use it, just rip open the bag and throw the frozen sofrito in the pot. It will melt quickly in whatever you are cooking.

Last night, I threw the frozen sofrito into a pot with two cans of vegetable stock and threw a big can of black beans into it. Heated it through and poured it over some rice. OMG!!! I thought it was too salty but my first husband did not. So it is a matter of taste. If you cannot find a big can of beans, use two smaller cans. or soak the beans overnight if you have time.